Toyota to start offering Qi wireless charging in 2013 models

Yesterday Toyota became the self-proclaimed first automaker to offer wireless device charging as an option in their vehicles. The 2013 Toyota Avalon Limited and Avalon Hybrid Limited will have Qi wireless charging technology included in their Technology add-on package.

While it's great to see Toyota start incorporating such features into their cars, it's a little disheartening that the availability is so limited. Not only is Qi only going to be offered in Toyota's $40,000+ high-end Avalon, but you will have to shell out an additional $1750 for the Technology package. Hopefully, you also want radar cruise control, precollision system, and automatic high beams.

Of course, as this kind of thing becomes more widespread across devices, it will doubtless start showing up more and more in vehicles. In the meantime, it would have been nice if Toyota used a phone that actually has built-in wireless charging in their picture.

Well, considering they were the largest company in the world, and considering media fawning over everything Apple not surprised, you know, the dude that buys this package should be mad at Toyota for false advertising if anything, Apple will come out with a non compatible qi standard for iPhone 6 ;D

I know what you mean. Got nothing against USA Today and they make beautiful apps but the staff over there is completely in love with Apple products. They'll downplay anything Microsoft and praise anything Apple (yeah, they even wrote an article about how the maps weren't "that bad").

Uh, nothing wrong with bland, but this car needs to be spiced up just to get to bland. Even though I'm sure some form of display of the phone is represented on the NAV screen above, it does make you wonder why the charger causes the phone to be placed so low and hard to read. It would make more sense to have it held higher with some form of proclip /brodit phone holder with a a built in Qi charger if it would ever come out. Of course, this would never be available on new cars because it doesn't fit in with modern sleek dashboards.

This kind of intregration is what makes wireless charging a viable standard and not a neat gimmick. The funny part is that the iphone would be the device to benefit the most from wireless charging, since they decided to start arbiltrarily changing their connector. When the iphone 5s comes out with the lighter, thinner Lighting II (tm) connector, then everyone will need new connectors again, but Qi is the easiest way to charge an Iphone, Android, WP or more without changing a thing. Just drop the device on the charger and that's it. Briliant!

In a perfect world, it will have Qi charging with NFC coupling bluetooth hands free speaker phone, music player, and GPS turn by turn navigation, all sync with the car speaker set. I predict 2 years later, iPhone 6 will be doing all those and people who watch the iTV ad will be like: wow, they are so innovative.